Mere Christianity Today

As editors of “a journal of mere Christianity,” we are often asked
what we mean by “mere Christianity.” We got this phrase, of course,
from C. S. Lewis, who picked it up from the Anglican divine Richard Baxter (d.
1691). Another way of saying “mere Christianity” is “what
has been believed everywhere, always, and by all,” to use the words of
St. Vincent of Lerins (d. 445).

We have always maintained, as did Lewis, that this is not a lowest-common-denominator
approach. It is not a political construct, listing everything everyone believes
and choosing just those still agreed upon. Mere Christianity is not in flux
from one generation to the next or from place to place, the denominator changing
every time a doctrine is questioned and therefore insisting upon it considered
“divisive.”

There are clear dividing lines that separate mere Christians from those who
have lost their “salt” by having either unwittingly traveled or
actively paved the road to apostasy.

The Christian’s Lord

It is imperative that these lines be marked and noted and that they be upheld
on peril of our souls and defended unto death should it come to that. These
are some of the features of “mere Christianity”:

• The mere Christian acknowledges that “Jesus is Lord,”
and means that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of man of the four canonical gospels,
and no one else, is Kyrios—his Lord and his God.

• In saying Jesus is “Lord,” the mere Christian means that
“all authority in heaven and on earth has been given” to Jesus Christ.
By saying “all” he means all.

• The mere Christian confesses Jesus as both Lord and Christ because God
the Father raised him from the dead—yes, the body was raised—after
his suffering and death on the cross for our sins, in fulfillment of the Scriptures.

• The mere Christian knows God as “Father” and calls him so,
because this is what Christ our Lord has taught us; it is also the utterance
given to him by the Holy Spirit, to cry out “Abba, Father.”

• The mere Christian believes that Christ has charged all who call him
Lord to make disciples of all nations, first, by baptizing them and, second,
by teaching them to observe all that he has commanded.

• The mere Christian knows that, as the sovereign and divine Lord to
whom all obedience is due, Jesus Christ provided for the transmission of his
commandments, which are to be obeyed.

• All that our Lord has commanded—the moral and spiritual requirements
of the Christian life of discipleship—are thus given to us in the apostolic
deposit of the Scriptures and may be discerned in the lives of the martyrs,
confessors, saints, and fathers of the church.

• The mere Christian realizes that he has received the faith from the
faithful witness of the apostles and saints of the Church. While free to innovate,
following Christ, who makes all things new, he is not autonomous and free to
change the faith. The faith is not determined by us; it is received and passed
on as delivered.

There are many more things that can be said about mere Christianity, and this
should not be read as an exhaustive definition. But at the very least, we can
assert that any church or any Christian claiming the name of Christ can neither
be ashamed of nor deny these claims about Jesus Christ and remain Christian.
Nor can he be derelict in openly and publicly proclaiming these truths regardless
of the cost. Those who refuse to speak, proclaim, and defend these truths are
not faithful.

The Christian’s Framework

We would find among many Christians general, indeed enthusiastic, agreement
with everything I have just said. But there are other aspects of mere Christianity
to which many of those people would vigorously dissent. These are sometimes
doctrinal but more often moral and liturgical. Some have suggested that if we
are to remain fully ecumenical, we must be willing to bracket any particular
teaching or practice that certain Christians at a particular time and place
might disagree on.

The mere Christian cannot do this. For example, many Christians seem either
confused or culpably ignorant about abortion. Some will argue that this is a
question about which sincere Christians may disagree. We believe that their
desire to disagree hardly means that abortion is not a matter of mere Christianity.
The sanctity of human life in the womb has been upheld by Christians from the
earliest times.

The sinfulness of extra-marital sexual activity is another example. Here again
some Christians propose an expansion of the moral teaching simply because so
many Christians no longer live by it. Again we must say that their desire to
disagree hardly means that chastity is not a matter of mere Christianity.

The biggest example, of course, is the innovation of Christian egalitarianism,
including the redefinition of the family and the ordination of women. We have
written a great deal on this subject and I will not go into more details here,
but in this innovation we see many people who favor mere Christianity insisting
that it does not include male headship, despite the hitherto universal belief
in it.

The Christian’s Vision

There are other false beliefs and doctrines that cloud over the moral and doctrinal
landscape of the Christian mind. Average Christians in the West today find it
difficult to discern many of these. We all struggle under various forms of unseen
cultural accommodations that compromise our Christian integrity and obscure
our sight.

For example, to what extent have we really escaped “the corruption that
is in the world because of passion” (2 Peter 1:4)? The toxins of a consumerist
culture have spread far and wide in our churches. None of us is perfect, and
we all see through a glass darkly. Even doctrines that we formally confess might
become clear to us only after years of Christian living and worship, such that
we would say we didn’t really understand them until that later moment
of enlightenment.

This is all the more reason to hold tightly to mere Christianity as that which
has been understood by everyone before us, even when our modern peers disagree.
It is a reason to take the most expansive definition possible of mere Christianity,
even when some points seem unenlightened or unprogressive. For only by walking
by the sight of those gone before us can we escape the myopia of both modern,
liberal Christianity and the secular consumerist culture in which we all live.

Mere Christianity is what has been believed by every Christian in every place
at all times, and what we are sure will be seen to be mere Christianity when
the fads and enthusiasms of the moment have finally run their course. On that
day, we shall no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face. Those
who think themselves free to change, to relax, or to reinterpret the faith handed
on to us by the Lord and his apostles will have some explaining to do.

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Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox.

The mission of the journal and its publisher, The Fellowship of St. James, is to provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church.